Ever get that sinking feeling that your Meta campaigns are a black hole for your budget? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. In fact, Meta Ads (aka. Facebook Ads) has changed a lot over the past few years and media buyers like you and me have to constantly change the way we buy traffic to get the desired results.
Let’s go over a quick checklist of things you need to keep present before launching your next Meta campaigns in 2024.
Conversion API Tracking and Attribution
As new regulations are being constantly added to the online advertising industry, so are the tracking limitations too. Since Apple’s IOS 14 privacy move, we saw that relying on website pixels is not sustainable anymore. In fact, new privacy changes have been introduced by major browsers like Firefox and Chrome by putting an end to 3rd party cookies.
Google Chrome 3rd Party Cookie Depreciation Timeline – Source Google
What this means is that you need to move from relying on website pixels to Conversion API solutions. By making this move, you will be able to accurately track your Meta campaigns performance and have a clear understanding of where results are coming from, while still being able to feed Meta Ads with the right conversion signals and user information it uses to optimize your campaigns.
If you don’t have any idea where to get started with Conversion API, I would recommend checking out ClickFlare.io. It offers a pretty solid conversion API solution for Meta and the team behind it is always ready to help if you need a hand with the setup.
Meta Ads Audience Targeting
Back in the days, it was pretty easy to deal with Facebook Ads (now Meta Ads). All you had to do was combine the right targeting options with the right ads to build up your optimal audience and boom, you had a decent campaign running. Now with all the privacy changes imposed by government regulations, you’d rather go for broad targeting instead of picking specific audience interest.
To put it simple, adding interest targeting to your ad sets will likely increase your CPMs without providing any additional benefits in terms of results. So unless you are promoting a niche product or service, I would highly recommend going broad.
Meta Ads Creative Testing
Meta Ads (aka. Facebook Ads) continues to be a creative centric platform. Before anything else, Meta focuses on creative engagement – after all people hang on Facebook and instagram to get entertained or be informed. So one of the most important things for a creative is to drive a healthy amount of engagement. Think of likes, positive comments, and clicks.
If you are planning to test image ads, it is very important to test angles and design styles separately. In case you are into video ads, that applies there too. Whether you are doing stock image and footage animations with voiceovers or UGC-style ads, make sure to separate the angles, actors, and video styles accordingly.
Pro tip: If you’re going to use UGC video ads, make sure your first couple of seconds have a strong thumb-stopping hook. Thought-provoking or controversial statements help a lot with that.
Meta Ads Budget Allocation
Still to this day, Meta Ads is looking for at least 50 conversions in 7 days for your campaign (or ad set) before it exits the learning phase. So allocating the budget wisely is crucial for your campaigns or ad sets. Instead of allocating random budgets from what you feel right to test waters, do some basic calculations and allocate the right budget amount for your goal CPA.
Example – You want to collect auto insurance leads at $20 per lead.
Min Daily Leads: 50 Convs ÷ 7 Days = Around 7 leads/day
Daily Budget: 7 leads x $20 = $140 /day
You can always test the waters with smaller budgets, but the chances of you getting out of the learning phase on time and being able to scale your campaigns fast enough are pretty low.
Funnel Optimization for Meta Ads
The best tool you can use to pitch your products and services after the prospect has clicked on your ads is your landing page. There is where you can further capture your prospects’ attention using the power of story-telling or make them engage in a smooth and fun to interact questionnaire.
Adding landing pages to your funnels gives you the ability to further refine your angles and optimize your funnels by A/B testing different angles or landing page styles to see what resonates best with your audience.
Pro tip: Make sure to A/B test one element of your landing page at a time as well as isolate landing page testing from creative testing. Testing multiple creative and landing page elements all at once often leads to unreliable results.
Check out Landerlab.io if you’re getting started with landing pages, or looking to upgrade your current landing page solution. It is packed with hundreds of ready-to-use landing page templates you can easily customize through its fully-fledged visual builder, run A/B test experiments, as well as collect and access lead information without having to deal with 3rd party tools.
Meta Ads Campaign Optimization and Automation
There are two types of Meta media buyers. Those who launch and manage a handful of campaigns on a monthly basis, and there are those who launch tens if not hundreds of campaigns a day and manage hundreds or thousands of campaigns at any point in time.
If you belong to those that run a handful of campaigns, you can handle most of your campaign optimization tasks manually on your own. However, if you’re one of those who consistently launches 10s of campaigns every day, and manages hundreds or thousands of campaigns simultaneously, then you need a solid automation solution.
By adding an automation solution to your media buying routine you will be able to launch more campaigns while spending less time, detect your campaign performance changes, cut out losers and scale winners without having to waste your days behind your ads manager. TheOptimizer offers you the power to do all of that from a single dashboard. Besides all the automation capabilities, TheOptimizer allows you to bring hundreds of Meta ad accounts in one single dashboard, so no more need to jump from one ad account to another.
In conclusion, Meta campaigns in 2024 require a strategic approach considering conversion API tracking, audience targeting, creative testing, budget allocation, funnel optimization, and campaign optimization and automation. By following this checklist and incorporating the recommended tools, you can effectively handle the ever-changing Meta Ads and achieve successful campaign outcomes. Remember, adaptation and continuous optimization are key to staying ahead in the ever-changing digital advertising environment.
